I’m not sure what’s stranger (via General Stuck), the fact that she couldn’t find a cushier wingnut welfare gig or the fact that someone thought she’d be good at selling houses:
But Bay Buchanan, a top Mitt Romney lieutenant who’s been involved in politics ever since serving as treasurer of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign, saw last November’s loss as a signal to get out of presidential politics.
“It was so tough. It was brutal,” she said of the loss to President Obama. “I think it’s the toughest because we really expected to win it,” added Buchanan, a former Treasurer of the United States who also ran her brother Pat’s three campaigns for president.
“I thought to myself in November, I have another career in me,” Buchanan said. So two days after the election, she started an online real estate course and now has her sales license and a firm: McEnearney Associates Inc. in McLean, Va.
I’m probably all wrong…probably there’s lots of rich wingers who would love to buy a house from Bay Buchanan.
Is it possible that many of the winger grifterati will move on to greener pastures? My guess it there’s still lots of political scams for them to run.
SFAW
I get no kick from sham-Bay-ing?
Baud
I wonder if she’ll specialize in gated communities.
Zifnab25
I have a hard time believing you can’t make a quick buck selling real estate on the edge of DC.
Four more years until the next election that matters. I’m sure she’s just killing time till then.
SFAW
Whine low, sweet harr-i-da-an?
SFAW
That depends on whether you consider the Sahara to have “lots” of sand. Because the two (i.e. scams and sand) are within an order of magnitude of each other.
Kathy in St. Louis
I sold residential real estate for 20 years. After 5 years in real estate less than 20 percent of agents are still around and making money. It has awful hours, no benfits, and you eat a lot of dirt when you are dealing with the public. I give Bay a year, at the most.
Short Bus Bully
Wrong question.
The correct question should be: “Are there still plenty of suckers/rubes/low info/shitheel hicks/racists/goldbugs/general wackos to rip off?”
And the answer to that, unfortunately, will always be a resounding FUCK YES.
srv
@Baud: We may not actually need Soros money to start a Walled Garden for these folks. Seriously, we should be HELPING them to Galtia.
? Martin
The perpetual outrage machine will grind you. If only it were possible to go on TV and not be artificially pissed off at something?
General Stuck
most excellent title
cckids
@Kathy in St. Louis: Yep. My spouse sold real estate for 10+ years before & after we met, it is hard. I really cannot imagine Bay being very good at the customer relations aspect of real estate; from what I’ve seen of her on the TV machine she doesn’t have great people skills.
Tho I could see her getting one of those “shows” on TLC or HGTV where she shows unrealistic people houses, & uses the opportunity to spout wingnut gospel. Jaysus, I hope no-one with the power to make that happen gets that idea.
ranchandsyrup
Plenty of home buyers will treat it as a meet and greet and ask to be regaled with tales from her govt and tv gigs.
Groucho48
I wonder if getting a real job, instead of the usual wingnut welfare says something about her, or about the possibility that there are so many grifters on the loose now that they can’t all be made senior fellows at right wing think tanks?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
My favorite part was “I’m a very charming person, as you know.” In Satan’s iPad list, perhaps. In real life, not so much.
GregB
Romney was certain that bringing her on board would give his campaign the Baymentum it needed to win.
ericblair
@Kathy in St. Louis:
I guess she’s expecting to cash in on her connections. Don’t know how successful that will be, since her connections benefit at best only her. I can’t really see how they’d benefit her clients, and if they’re not actively trying to kiss Pat Buchanan’s ass I can’t see why they’d bother. Anyway, that’s one firm off the list when we try to unload our humble abode.
jharp
“I think it’s the toughest because we really expected to win it (beat Obama),” added Buchanan”
This one I will never figure out.
Are they really that fucking stupid or what?
eemom
I’m sure there’s a pair of siblings more loathsome than this cow’s ass and her brother in recorded history somewhere, but at the moment I’m drawing a blank.
Maude
@jharp:
Yup.
trollhattan
Now, if she can pass her law and dental boards she can be just like Orly. Take that, pesky Kenyan!
Also, too, Ruth Marcus continues her employment at WaPo despite making sense.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ruth-marcus-the-phony-pro-gun-argument/2013/01/31/bdf91e5c-6bf1-11e2-ada0-5ca5fa7ebe79_story.html?hpid=z3
ruemara
I predict she thinks it will be a cocktail party with house keys involved instead of cash for votes. I wonder how she’ll feel when she actually has to do, you know, work?
Yutsano
@jharp: They believed their own hype. There were enough polling outfits telling them exactly what they wanted to hear that was so far divorced from reality that they bought into it full bore. Now they’re crying in their beers becuz they wuz robbed by that damn nigra in the White House AGAIN!!
ding dong
Bay might do a good job selling desperate defense contractors’ mcmansions to those furriners that her family lurrrves. I don’t understand why she would need a job though. She has to be in her sixties and she’s had plenty of teevee and wingnut welfare gigs that she should be able to retire.
befuggled
@ericblair: Her connections probably have houses to unload.
Roger Moore
I think anyone associated with the Romney campaign will find they’re covered with the stench of failure, and it’s going to be near impossible to wash off. McCain was able to ride out failure by hanging onto his Senate gig and deflecting most of the blame onto George Unperson Bush’s financial catastrophe. Mitt and his close supporters have no such easy excuse and will find wingnut welfare jobs much harder to find.
geg6
@jharp:
Seriously. I know we make fun of them for living in their bubble (h/t Bill Maher), but apparently their particular bubble is impermeable.
Baud
Why isn’t she going Galt? Aren’t Obama’s taxes high enough?
Keith G
Hell, I’d book her services especially if I felt it was advantageous to have such a crazed, yet focused, Cujo on my side.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
I hear there’s this great project in Idaho that needs an agent…
trollhattan
@ruemara:
I believe we can all predict she’s Not getting coffee and she’s Not getting the good leads.
May all her clients be named Patel.
Tyro
@jharp: no kidding. But I guess they really were drinking their own kool aid. I heard the most ridiculous justifications for why the polls were wrong. I didn’t think anyone but the rubes believed them.
Sly
@Baud:
The inexhaustible labor force of robots is still on back order.
Ash Can
Who wants to bet on how long before Bay’s in the news again, for getting slapped with a big-ass discrimination suit for refusing to show homes in white areas to black clients?
Yutsano
@trollhattan:
:: snicker ::
(with apologies to schrodinger’s cat)
eemom
Just read that W’s dog Barney died. : (
arguingwithsignposts
Suck it, you fascist. Your tears are the dew of heaven.
Baud
@eemom:
Nooooo. He was the only Bush I liked.
Yutsano
@Baud: To be completely fair, Jenna isn’t turning out too horribly. Apparently getting out into the world and seeing real poverty did her some good.
Ash Can
@eemom: That’s a shame. Seriously.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Baud: Especially with his fondness for biting reporters :)
Baud
@Yutsano:
Is Jenna turning into a Meghan McCain-type Republican? At least W. has the good sense to lay low. I feel bad for Meghan the way her dad has been acting.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Myself I always thought it was odd in itself that Willard asked Bay and John Sununu to come out of mothballs. Even the final result didn’t indicate his campaign was that weak.
jharp
@Yutsano:
“@jharp: They believed their own hype.”
Some yes. Some were nothing more than grifters. And some were really that fucking stupid, like 3/4’s of them.
jl
off topic, but sad news
Former First Dog Barney Bush Passes Away
Igor Bobic
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/former-first-dog-barney-bush-passes-away
First dog Barney was one of the very, very few fond memories of the Dub administration for me.
I was a afraid to read the article, since I thought maybe the dog died because Dub dropped it on its head again. That might sound mean, but it is true, I had a fear that Dub did something and poor dog died before its time in an accident. Honest, I had that thought.
But it passed away from lymphoma after 12 years of people-year life. So, Barney was 84 old in dog-years, is that correct?
SiubhanDuinne
Almost three months later, and this still astonishes me.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Willard acted like he’d been kept in a pickle jar the last twenty years. I realized today (duh, I’m slow) that mister “Dow 36000” Kevin Hassett was Willard’s campaign economic advisor. Which isn’t completely shocking until one discovers he was McCain’s in 2008, Bush’s in 2004 and McCain’s in 2000.
What a string! It’s not like getting the band back together after twenty years and seven platinum albums; it’s like forming a band by going down to Pep Boys and grabbing the first seven guys you see.
I_D_Inuse
I can say I finally understand derivatives and the screw you upside down home mortgage holders attitude…Bay Bitch shines the light. May Ceiling Cat have a trick or two up s/he’s bag of catnip and the “Mills of Ceiling Deity’s hell grind exceeding fine”.
lamh35
So can we finally put to rest the OBama didn’t defend Susan Rice enough mess. Seems like Susan Rice was not Obama’s first choice after all. Is it just me are does this mean that the admin basically rolled the Republicans. It seems to me they are happy to have the fight over Hagel since it entails Republicans being d*icks to another GOP pol, but thanx to the Susan Rice fiasco (and the prospect of taking Kerry seat via S. Brown) Kerry just sailed through.
Kerry Says He Was Offered Job Before Rice Dropped Out
WereBear
@eemom: The Borgias?
gogol's wife
@General Stuck:
Or is she the bobtail nag?
SiubhanDuinne
@jl:
RIP Barney. I hated the way the Bushies exploited him, but it wasn’t the poor dog’s fault. And at this late date, I can even spare a smidgen of sympathy for Dubya or Laura or the twins or whomever loved him. I know they’re hurting tonight.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@GregB: He misunderstood – he wasn’t in a camptown race.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Said just like somebody who could with perfect confidence tell a prospective real-estate client “It’s a great time to buy right now, prices are just going to keep going up…”
In 2007.
gogol's wife
@Baud:
My thoughts exactly!
jl
@SiubhanDuinne: I have to admit, the only time I felt sorry for Dub was pictures him trying to deal with Barney. Dub just did not seem to know how to connect with the dog.
lamh35
@lamh35: or maybe Kerry’s helping Obama admin save face?
Ben Franklin
She and her brother Pat, are Irish.
I’ve never understood how anyone with Irish roots can be conservative.
Collaborators?
Mezz (apa Michael2)
I think this is exactly it. As long as one understands the distinction between the nuts – the true believers (e.g. the new Cruz nut from TX, the Paultards, etc.) will keep on trying to F**k up the political works. But (here’s hope, at least) they’ll have increasingly fewer allies, so they’ll be increasingly powerless (yet sadly, likely all the more vocal. For historical comparison, see: the Fireaters)
But the true grifters, the ones who saw from the beginning that there was a quick buck to be made from the Rubes (Beck, Scott Brown, Herr Limbaugh et al), I don’t think they plan on getting back into the fray. That nice fat paycheck, not having to campaign and kiss ass, basically not really having to work at all, or at least do any original thought of any type, and a never ending supply of High Grade Morons to peddle your BS to – how do you top that?
Why on earth would Brown want to run again? Why not exploit the Fervent, since they’ll soon be good for little else except stirring up that Impotent White Rage – which they can also exploit for dollars!!
Baud
@lamh35:
He probably was Obama’s first choice, but it doesn’t mean Obama wasn’t considering all of his options.
geg6
IT, but if anyone wants to check out where I live, tonight’s “Kitchen Nightmares” with Gordon Ramsey is featuring a restaurant in Beaver, PA. The restaurant sucks (though I haven’t been there for years and he may have improved it), but it’s a beautiful little town.
muddy
@SiubhanDuinne: I remember when Bush dropped him on his head in front of the girl scouts, and they were so dismayed.
New dog today! Both dogs very happy. The puppy takes advantage of the height advantage from the couch.
TBogg
Real estate is a game of contacts and, as horrible as Bay Buchanan is, she undoubtedly has tons of contacts; lobbyists and Senate aides and CIA moving in and out of the McLean area.
Suffern ACE
@lamh35: yep. Look, she was rumored to be next in line. Benghazi happened late in the campaign, and I don’t get this “didn’t defend her” stuff. Democrat surrogates are awful at that and media liberals aren’t much better. At one point he told the media to attack him, not her, but no one was biting. What more should he do? Was she worth a fight? I don’t think so.
gogol's wife
@muddy:
Cutecutecute
jl
@lamh35:
Or maybe this is Kerry being Kerry and blabbing stuff that will create consternation over nothing that can be figured out by 99.99 percent of his audience.
If it is true, who the heck knows what was going on? Obama was folding? WH got word that Rice nom was really truly hopeless and Obama was moving on to next stage.
I find it hard to believe that the WH would have to do a head fake for Kerry. Not sure how to put this politely, but John Kerry is a natural type to get an easy Senate confirmation.
But, sorry, if you don’t have anything nice to say about somebody, shouldn’t say anything at all.
Kerry irritates me. So I hope he has a very effective, very low profile term.
Liberty60
I never got the impression that Pat and Bay Buchanan were grifters- I always thought the seemed more like True Believers, the first ones to throw their money in the basket.
Plus, neither one of them is a Wall Street or Ivy League type, so they probably don’t have the connections to get a better gig like a think tank or Liberty University teaching position.
I expect eventually to see Sarah! selling shit on QVC for the same reasons.
ETA- she is a grifter first rate, just not one with the slyness to slide into the top tier where you don’t appear to be grifting.
eemom
Jeez Louise. I saw that item re Barney on a FB group called “Dog Files” — and I now see a follow up post warning that people who say mean things about the doggie’s death will be banned.
Now THAT, is some fucked up shit — that anyone would hold it against a dog — or an animal of any kind — because they disliked a human being.
Worse yet, the concept that such people, because they dislike Bush, are on “our side.” Well, fuck you assholes — you are WORSE than them. Get the fuck OFF my side.
Zero tolerance for meanness to animals, even in dumbass FB posts.
Roger Moore
@Ben Franklin:
When you move from the bottom of the totem pole to the top, you can behave two ways. One is to remember how badly it sucked to be at the bottom and try to behave better than the people who at the top before you. The other is to decide that it’s finally your turn to do the fucking instead of getting fucked. People who behave the first way have empathy and are liberals; people who behave the second way don’t and are conservatives.
ETA: In case the point wasn’t clear, there’s nothing magic about your ancestry that makes you behave one way rather than the other.
jacy
My mother-in-law has sold real estate for 30+ years. Of course she’s never actually sold a house, but it’s always given her an excuse not to do anything productive with her life.
(she’s basically Bay Buchanan with blonder hair, so she gets no quarter from me)
Baud
@eemom:
Seconded.
Liberty60
@eemom:
Amen.
The only reason I would pause at unloading the tumbrels, is the thought that someone’s Barney would miss them.
Ben Franklin
@Roger Moore:
You may be able to tell which Irish faction I belong to; (hint) it’s not the collaborators.
geg6
@eemom:
Agreed. Poor Barney! It wasn’t his fault that his owner was the biggest douche to ever live in the White House. He was very cute and I love that he hated the WH press corpse as much as I do. I’d bite the fuckers, too, if I could.
SiubhanDuinne
@muddy:
Oh, lookit all that doggeh luv! So cute!
@Ben Franklin:
She’s a convert to Mormonism. That’s interesting.
jl
@geg6: Barney made for good WH Christmas video clips too. And, yes, I liked Barney for going after the press corps. Damn, that dog was a thespian, and an effective press critic too. Talented little fellow who was thrust onto the world stage by sheer circumstance.
Other news, Wonkette makes fun of John Kerry, so I don’t have to say anything mean about him.
Bitch Moves
JOHN KERRY, WORLD’S PERFECTEST DIPLOMAT
by REBECCA SCHOENKOPF
Wonkette
http://wonkette.com/499511/john-kerry-worlds-perfectest-diplomat#more-499511
Ben Franklin
@SiubhanDuinne:
She’s a convert to Mormonism.
Do tell. Does the Pope know?
SiubhanDuinne
@Liberty60:
You mean?
AxelFoley
Damn, these muthafuckas REALLY believed they were gonna win. They believed their own hype.
What’s that saying? “Don’t get high off your own supply.”
GOP would be wise to remember that.
trollhattan
@AxelFoley:
The election night Fox News feed, properly edited, could be the next cult classic midnight movie. It has everything but Tim Curry.
Confess I kept switching to it because of the hilarious BJ snarkfest, otherwise I’d have missed the wingnut tear deluge.
General Stuck
Whenever i spot my nym on the front page, I have a flashback to the Stunning Hypocrisy thread, and the cold lonely feeling of hanging from John Cole’s personal front page crucifix. But Dougj is cool.and thanks.
Mike in NC
Bay’s been collecting sweet wingnut welfare since the Coolidge Administration. She wrote the book on grifting.
Yutsano
@General Stuck: Now now General. Water under the bridge and letting sleeping dogs lie and all that.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@muddy: Adorable. The new sister looks like loads of fun.
Joseph Nobles
To drive your enemies before you and hear the online real estate license registrations of their women.
PeakVT
@Joseph Nobles: Win.
Moving on to women we like (most of us, at least): Hillary in every country she visited as SoS.
Anya
@lamh35: I always knew Kerry was the president’s first choice. Kerry’s name was bandied about in connection to SoS from O’s first term election. Why not? Kerry is extremely qualified, he wanted the job (and without the whole Clinton drama he would’ve got the job the first time around), and he worked very hard to elect the president. The Susan Rice drama was fuelled by the MSM and some in the left who are always ready for an “Obama caved” hysteria. Fuck that shit, I am sick of it!
Anya
@jl: Poor, Barney. I loved the little guy. And as others said before me, I really loved him for hating the stupid media.
Condolences to the Bush family. I am sure they will miss him.
eemom
@Yutsano:
dude, not kissing Cole’s ass 24/7 may be a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it.
John
@AxelFoley: I think it’s like “don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy” if you ask me.
jl
@Anya: IIRC, the scenario for one of the Dub years’ WH
HolidayChristmas videos was that no one in the administration was up to making theHolidayChristmas clip, so the chore was handed over to Barney and, I think, the WH cat(?).I wondered how the wiseacre who wrote that got it by the PR people, and if that person kept their job.
Edited for grammar and japes.
schrodinger's cat
@Yutsano: I don’t get the joke, are Patels supposed to be stingy?
ETA: You can make fun of Patels all you like, but no making fun of the kittehs and physics. Ask jl, we got into quite an argument last night.
General Stuck
@Yutsano:
Was just spoofing a little.
Anya
@jl: I think Barney was the most human and smartest in the Bush Admin.
Didn’t W say once that he will not withdraw the troops from Iraq “even if Laura and Barney are my only supporters,” or somthing like that? I remember thinking at the time, “Barney you’re our only hope, please bite the asshole everytime he mentions Iraq.”
LosGatosCA
Think of it as moving from wholesale to retail grifting.
Just following the Donald Trump model.
jl
@schrodinger’s cat: I think our argument was more of misunderstanding… but are you saying kittehs, or Patels, are chaotic here?
@Anya: Seriously from what I have read, I wonder how much of the Bush spousal/offspring unit was on board with Bush/Cheney thought as events unfolded, both here and at home. Wasn’t there talk that one of the Dub kids voted Dem in 2008?
Good thing Barney has an excuse to stay on the sidelines. I mean, he was a dog. Sure, a talented dog, but a dog.
Edit: heck, even Dub himself started deviating from Cheneythought, which probably saved the country from more mess. I think that is why the wingnuts and neocons really want Dub to stay out of sight, besides his unpopularity. Even their puppet had enough at the end.
Edit 2: which reminds, heard a bit RW talk radio yesterday with jock and callers arguing that isn’t it time we quit blaming Dub for all the problems. I wanted to stand up and yell “Hell NO! It is not time!”
schrodinger's cat
@jl: Kittehs definitely cause chaos, unless they are stately like Tunch.
Southern Beale
Somebody who ran Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaign not once, not twice, but THREE times “really expected” Mitt Romney to win in November?
Shocker.
/sarcasm
trollhattan
@schrodinger’s cat:
“Glengarry Glen Ross” reference. If you’ve not seen it, see it. That the author evidently fell straight onto his skull with great force sometime within the last few years shouldn’t reflect on the script. Much.
Yutsano
@schrodinger’s cat: The joke is more Bay having to deal with icky browns. Per thang. I hope all her clients are south Asians as well. It might just open up her feeble little wingnut brain.
mclaren
My takeaway from this one is completely different from everyone else’s.
Bay Buchanan realized that her scam trying to help Romney loot the country wasn’t going anywhere (because people have caught on to the looters like Romney and Reagan and Dubya and are no longer voting for ’em), so she decided to try another scam — the good old housing bubble!
Unfortunately for Bay Buchanan, that bubble burst a few years back, so the sell-insanely-overpriced-houses-and-make-a-killing scam is also a dry hole.
The bottom line here seems to me to be 1) that the grifters are running out of scams to make a living at because the public is getting wise to the Republican con game; and 2) the grifters are not too bright because they don’t seem to have realized that the entire carnival looks like it’s shutting down, not just the shadiest of the con games it ran.
To put it bluntly, the entire Republican scam machine has run out of cons that the public will buy. They tried the “evil commies will get ya unless ya vote for us!” and then the USSR imploded and vanished. So they switched to the “evil gays will get ya unless ya vote for us!” and then gay marriage turned mainstream and it became impossible to may a living cranking up the hate to 11 on gays. Then they shifted to “evil black Kenyan soshulist Marxist Islamic preznit will get ya unless ya vote for us!” and then after four years plus of a black guy in the white house, we still don’t have FEMA camps rounding up all the white folks and turning ’em into Alpo.
So what’s left?
Not much. The entire Republican scam machine is breaking down. People are seeing through it. It’s no longer possible to do a Reagan and flim-flam the public with voodoo economics, because we’ve all been there and heard that, and we know it’s just bullshit. Romney tried a Reagan, essentially, and unlike 1980, people started asking tough questions about the Republican presidential candidate’s economic numbers, and his scam fell apart.
All the Republican grifters may have to get real jobs one of these days. The scams just aren’t working on the public the way they used to.
liberal
@trollhattan:
Jesus, I can never get enough of that shit.
Anne Laurie
@jacy:
This was my first thought, too also. Twenty years ago — i.e., the period Buchanan & her allies are determined to keep living in — “selling real estate” was code for “rich man’s wife who wants to pretend she’s got a real job”. You could drive around, criticize other peoples’ crappy taste & bad choices, write off lunch (brunch, dinner) with your friends & people worth sucking up to as ‘business’, and deduct the cost of your home office/annual land barge purchase / expensive newfangled cell phone from your taxes. And realtors ‘made their own hours’, so it wouldn’t distract you from being your husband’s social coodinator or pestering your kids’ teachers or leading local NIMBY crusades. I’m sure things have changed for people who actually need to earn a living, but as a “social signifier” for someone like Bay Buchanan, she can still flash her licensce to demonstrate she’s a working professional without cutting into her rigorous round of
griftingnetworking for the Greedy Old Party.AHH onna Droid
@Ben Franklin: Nope, like fellow faker Ned “Carlos Mencia” Holfuss, the Buchanans are three quarters German.
mainmati
Bay’s personality and political background pretty much insures that she will likely be a big fail at RE, which requires empathetic, interactive personalities.
Misterpuff
Bay, Here’s a Real Estate Tip:
At the Open House:
Put out fresh baked cookies, not polished turds.
J R in W Va
You guys should know, the RE market in the greater DC area is still smokin’ hot. The beltway is the last bastion of federal contract heaven, except for the big research centers in the deserts, where big BANGS don’t attract attention.
People who come to DC for a couple of years to meet other rising stars need impressive houses. These are both service officers and high end contractors. Many of them will be GOPers.
Bay may make a buttload of money. Hope not, but could be.
Horse country n Virginia is expensive with a capital $$.
John M. Burt
Don’t give her too much abuse.
We should be encouraging and supportive of wingnuts who seek to reform themselves and find honest employment.
scav
@John M. Burt: real estate? ok, baby steps.
xian
@Ben Franklin: funny thing is that they’re Irish andCatholic but their parents are an Irish protestant and a German catholic.
oldster
@xian:
Oh jesus, an Irish protestant?
So *that* explains why Buchanan has been America’s Ian Paisley for so many years.